Dads will be proud: Google Home command now turns on lights in just one room

Asking Google Home to “Turn on the lights” will now trigger the lights in that one room, not the whole home.

The command only works if the Google Home hardware is assigned a room with assigned lights.

This is a more energy-efficient way to execute a very common Google Home command.

If you ask your Google Home to “Turn on the lights” — but don’t clarify in which room to do so — the usual action is for Google Assistant to turn on every light in your home.

This gets the job done, for sure, but it’s terribly wasteful. Most people will likely forget that all the lights in the house are on and thus waste a lot of energy. And then your dad yells out, “Why are all the lights on in here?! Who pays the bills in this house?!”

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However, an update is slowly rolling out to Google Home hardware that will change the default action of the simple “Turn on the lights” command, as confirmed by Android Police. Soon, saying “Turn on the lights” will only trigger the lights in the room where you gave the command.

The command will only work properly under two conditions:

The Google Home unit is assigned to a room in your house.

Whatever compatible light/outlet system you use is also assigned to the same room.

As an example, if you are in the kitchen and say “Turn on the lights” to your Google Home Mini that is assigned to the kitchen, that Google Home will turn on on all the lights in the kitchen, but nowhere else.

However, if either the lights or the Home hardware has no room designation, all the lights in the house will turn on as usual.

Users on Reddit started to notice the change about a week ago, but it wasn’t until today that Android Police was able to independently verify that the change is rolling out.

Give it a shot in your own home if you have the proper setup. Let us know in the comments how it works out!